September linkstack
Soccer nicknames, political profanity, new language rules, and more.
Welcome back, longtime readers, and greetings to all the new subscribers who’ve signed up since the August linkstack. I publish these link roundups once a month and am always happy to receive tidbits about names, brands, writing, and the language of commerce.
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Newsletter recommendations of the month
“covers the art of political persuasion and celebrates the best of American art and design.” Check out “How Candidates Rebranded for 2024” and “What Does Typography Say About American Identity?” — the latter is about an exhibit of the work of artist Mark Kelner at the American University Museum in Washington, D.C.My only complaint about Erin Griffith’s Tribute to the Heroes of Business™ is that there isn’t more of it.
writes about “unicorns (the start-up kind) and other tech industry shenanigans”; get started with “Burning $25M Before Breakfast (harder than it looks!).”If you like your progressive political commentary with fangs, talons, and curse words, subscribe immediately to
’s Substack, which continues the excellent work he did at the Village Voice before “some rich asshole bought the Voice, quickly lost interest, and shitcanned it in August 2018.” I learned about Edroso years ago via Nancy Nall’s blog (also recommended). Here he is with “The N Word: I say they’re Nazis and I say the hell with it.”Soccer nicknames
“Barcelona fans are culers or cules — meaning ‘those showing their backsides’ — because ‘Passers-by looking up would see a long row of bums seated along the wall at the very top of the stand.’” (Language Hat, with links to a series on European football nicknames published in The Athletic.)
Beauty queen
“Today, makeup is so ubiquitous that it’s difficult to imagine a time when a little translucent powder drew hard stares and condemnation. But just over 100 years ago, external beauty was thought to be the result of internal goodness.” Then Elizabeth Arden — a businesswoman from rural Canada who had witnessed the power of cosmetics during a visit to Paris — changed everything. (Stacy A. Cordery for Air Mail)
Beauty vs. truth
Did Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” change anything about the cosmetics industry or our perceptions of beauty? An excerpt from
’s new book The Road to Hell, which examines the gap between purpose-driven marketing and results, and which I’m looking forward to reading soon.
Dirty politics
“Profanity in political rhetoric ‘almost seems like it’s been normalized,’ which might sap its impact, says Benjamin Bergen, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California at San Diego who researches profanity.” (Washington Post: “Why the #&@% are candidates swearing so much these days?”)
Dagnabbit!
What in tarnation is “tarnation”? (Mental Floss, via Jesse Sheidlower)
Allons-y!
New Yorker contributor
’s “highly subjective and inexhaustive list of things I've learned in, about, and autour de la France,” including: “French dogs born in the same year are supposed to be given names that begin with the same letter. This year’s letter is V. (K, Q, W, X, Y and Z are excluded from the system, as they’re considered too difficult.)” And also: “Un éléphant is a male elephant, une éléphant is a female elephant, and un éléphanteau is a baby elephant of either gender.”Caro’s secrets
I will never tire of reading about how Robert Caro, biographer of LBJ and Robert Moses, practices his craft. For her curiously addictive newsletter Noted,
— a professor of English at CUNY and the author of a book about authors’ notebooks — annotates Caro’s notebooks, calendars, corkboards, and notes-to-self: “For every day that he writes zero words, he gives a reason such as his son (Chase); travel (Italy); or just plain fatigue (lazy). Even with his ambitious working schedule, Caro reserves Sunday for rest.”
Selling it
James Earl Jones, who died September 9 at 93, has been justly honored for his film and theater roles. But he also lent his distinctive deep voice to some memorable commercials for Sprint, Verizon, Chevrolet, and an outfit I’d never heard of: Pray, Inc. (Adweek)
Nickname of the year
People are calling Cybertrucks “Deploreans,” and I have to admit it’s kind of perfect, although “wankpanzer” still works, too. The earliest citation I’ve found is from Urban Dictionary, April 19, 2024.
New words
It’s September, which means it’s OED update season: “The latest update to the Oxford English Dictionary includes more than 600 new words, phrases, and senses, including brownie point, mic drop, third wheel, and cheap date.” (I’ve written about “third wheel” myself, here.) There are also a bunch of beer-related new entries, including beer belly, beer goggles, and beer bong.
New rules
It’s a Very Big Deal for editors in North America whenever a new edition of The Chicago Manual of Style — aka CMOS or, occasionally, “the Bible” — is published. What’s new and different in the recently released 18th edition? Jonathon Owen interviewed University of Chicago Press honcho Russell Harper to get the goods. “Some people are still getting over the fact that we don’t recommend more than one space between sentences,” Harper said, possibly with a sigh. (Disclosure: Many years ago I answered questions about name development for CMOS’s “Shop Talk” column.)
Leaving Kelseyville
“It’s like saying you live in Hitlerville,” said one resident of Kelseyville, a town of 3,382 in California’s Lake County that was named after a brutal 19th-century exploiter of Native people. The town is being renamed Konocti, an Indigenous word for a nearby mountain, but it’s unclear whether history can be erased: “The name may be gone, but the legacy of cruelty will be harder to remove.” (Alta magazine) For another take on place-renaming, see my 2021 story “The Valley of the S-Word.”
What does “second-guess” mean?
“Every time I encounter the verb second-guess, I have to think hard about it,” writes
. “It reminds me of buzzy made-up compounds like upsell and high-touch. Even more annoying, it often doesn’t mean what I think it means. In fact, this word’s behavior in the wild is all over the place.” Read more.What does “nimrod” mean?
“Many people, including me, have distinct memories of Bugs Bunny calling [Elmer] Fudd a nimrod, but no one has been able to identify any specific cartoon in which he does so. Instead, it seems to be a case of quote migration and the plasticity of human memory, and perhaps an example of the Mandela effect, false memories that are shared by a wide group of people.” - Dave Wilton, Wordorigins.org
Did AI write that review?
Take a quiz, created by two researchers at Lancaster University, to see whether you can tell which hotel reviews were written by humans and which by AI. I scored 76.7%, but in my defense I got only one question completely wrong.
And speaking of quizzes
Happy 200th episode to the Allusionist podcast! Golden-voiced host Helen Zaltzman has been showering us with anniversary gifts: Episode 199 is a list of 199 topics that haven’t (yet) made it into the podcast, and Episode 200 is an extremely clever language quiz. Here’s to 200 more!
Thanks for the mention – will add the Dove image caption to my files 📝
!! Thanks so much for the shout-out, what a lovely surprise! I was thinking very enthusiastic things about your mail before I got to that part, but now I can't tell you them because it'll seem like I'm just reciprocating